Comedians React to Daniel Tosh Rape Joke Controversy via Twitter

Host of the Comedy Central show, Tosh.O, Daniel Tosh has been fielding of a good deal of negative press this week. A woman who attended Tosh’s stand-up routine last Friday at Hollywood’s The Laugh Factory took to her friend’s Tumblr to write about how Tosh made her the target of rape jokes.

The viral Tumblr post, “So a Girl Walks into a Comedy Club…”, asks readers to “Please spread the word and reblog” and it already has over 23,000 Likes and Reblogs. The anonymous attendee wrote:

So Tosh then starts making some very generalizing, declarative statements about rape jokes always being funny, how can a rape joke not be funny, rape is hilarious, etc…So I yelled out, “Actually, rape jokes are never funny!”

…After I called out to him, Tosh paused for a moment. Then, he says, “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, 5 guys right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her…” and I, completely stunned and finding it hard to process what was happening but knowing i needed to get out of there, immediately nudged my friend, who was also completely stunned, and we high-tailed it out of there. It was humiliating, of course, especially as the audience guffawed in response to Tosh, their eyes following us as we made our way out of there. I didn’t hear the rest of what he said about me.

The comedian took to his Twitter account to apologize:

all the out of context misquotes aside, i’d like to sincerely apologize j.mp/PJ8bNs

The Laugh Factory’s owner Jamie Masada told BuzzFeed that the exchange didn’t actually occur exactly the way that the woman described, stating the Tosh was merely making a comment rather than a joke at the audience member’s expense.

Masada says Tosh asked the audience, “What you guys want to talk about?” After someone in the front said “rape,” a woman in the audience started screaming, “No, rape is painful, don’t talk about it.” Then, Masada says, “Daniel came in, and he said, ‘Well it sounds like she’s been raped by five guys’ — something like that. I really didn’t hear properly.”

Still, the joke’s now on Tosh, with many influential colleagues chastising and even defending the comedian via Twitter.